High Performance iOS Apps

High Performance iOS Apps

by Gaurav Vaish
Released June 2016
Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ISBN: 9781491911143

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Book description

Ready to build mobile apps that out-perform the rest? If you’re an iOS developer with app-building experience, this practical guide provides tips and best practices to help you solve many common performance issues. You’ll learn how to design and optimize iOS apps that deliver a smooth experience even when the network is poor and memory is low.

Today’s picky users want fast and responsive apps that don’t hog resources. In this book, author Gaurav Vaish demonstrates methods for writing optimal code from an engineering perspective, using reusable Objective-C code that you can use right away. Up your game and create high-performance native iOS apps that truly stand out from the crowd.

  • Measure key performance indicators—attributes that constitute and affect app performance
  • Write efficient apps by minimizing memory and power consumption, and explore options for using available CPU cores
  • Optimize your app’s lifecycle and UI, as well as its networking, data sharing, and security features
  • Learn about application testing, debugging and analysis tools, and monitoring your app in the wild
  • Collect data from real users to analyze app usage, identify bottlenecks, and provide fixes
  • Use iOS 9 upgrades to improve your app’s performance

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Table of contents

  1. Preface
    1. Who Should Read This Book
    2. Why I Wrote This Book
    3. Navigating This Book
    4. Online Resources
    5. Conventions Used in This Book
    6. Using Code Examples
    7. Safari® Books Online
    8. How to Contact Us
    9. Acknowledgments
  2. I. Getting Started
  3. 1. Performance in Mobile Apps
    1. Defining Performance
    2. Performance Metrics
      1. Memory
      2. Power Consumption
      3. Initialization Time
      4. Execution Speed
      5. Responsiveness
      6. Local Storage
      7. Interoperability
      8. Network Condition
      9. Bandwidth
      10. Data Refresh
      11. Multiuser Support
      12. Single Sign-on
      13. Security
      14. Crashes
    3. App Profiling
      1. Sampling
      2. Instrumentation
    4. Measurement
      1. Project and Code Setup
      2. Crash Reporting Setup
      3. Instrumenting Your App
      4. Logging
    5. Summary
  4. II. Core Optimizations
  5. 2. Memory Management
    1. Memory Consumption
      1. Stack Size
      2. Heap Size
    2. Memory Management Model
    3. Autoreleasing Objects
    4. Autorelease Pool Blocks
    5. Automatic Reference Counting
      1. Rules of ARC
    6. Reference Types
      1. Variable Qualifiers
      2. Property Qualifiers
    7. Getting Your Hands Dirty
      1. Photo Model
      2. Storyboard Update
      3. Method Implementations
      4. Output Analysis
    8. Zombies
    9. Rules of Memory Management
    10. Retain Cycles
      1. Rules to Avoid Retain Cycles
      2. Common Scenarios for Retain Cycles
      3. Observers
      4. Returning Errors
    11. Weak Type: id
      1. Solution to the Problem
    12. Object Longevity and Leaks
    13. Singletons
    14. Finding Mystery Retains
    15. Best Practices
    16. Memory Usage in Production
    17. Summary
  6. 3. Energy
    1. CPU
    2. Network
    3. Location Manager and GPS
      1. Optimal Initialization
      2. Turn Off Inessential Features
      3. Use Network Only If Essential
      4. Background Location Services
      5. NSTimers, NSThreads, and Location Services
      6. Restart After App Kill
    4. Screen
      1. Animation
      2. Video Play
      3. Multiple Screens
    5. Other Hardware
    6. Battery Level and State-Aware Code
    7. Profiling for Energy Use
    8. Best Practices
    9. Summary
  7. 4. Concurrent Programming
    1. Threads
    2. The Cost of Threads
      1. Kernel Data Structures
      2. Stack Size
      3. Creation Time
    3. GCD
    4. Operations and Queues
    5. Thread-Safe Code
      1. Atomic Properties
      2. Synchronized Blocks
      3. Locks
      4. Use Reader–Writer Locks for Concurrent Reads and Writes
      5. Use Immutable Entities
      6. Have a Central State Updater Service
      7. State Observers and Notifications
      8. Prefer Async over Sync
    6. Summary
  8. III. iOS Performance
  9. 5. Application Lifecycle
    1. App Delegate
    2. Application Launch
      1. First Launch
      2. Cold Start
      3. Warm Launch
      4. Launch After Upgrade
    3. Push Notifications
      1. Remote Notifications
      2. Local Notifications
    4. Background Fetch
    5. Summary
  10. 6. User Interface
    1. View Controller
      1. View Load
      2. View Hierarchy
      3. View Visibility
    2. View
      1. UILabel
      2. UIButton
      3. UIImageView
      4. UITableView
      5. UIWebView
      6. Custom Views
    3. Auto Layout
    4. Size Classes
    5. New Interaction Features in iOS 8
      1. Interactive Notifications
      2. App Extensions
    6. Summary
  11. 7. Network
    1. Metrics and Measurement
      1. DNS Lookup Time
      2. SSL Handshake Time
      3. Network Type
      4. Latency
      5. Networking API
    2. App Deployment
      1. Servers
      2. Request
      3. Data Format
    3. Tools
      1. Network Link Conditioner
      2. AT&T Application Resource Optimizer
      3. Charles
    4. Summary
  12. 8. Data Sharing
    1. Deep Linking
    2. Pasteboards
    3. Sharing Content
      1. Document Interaction
      2. Activities
    4. iOS 8 Extensions
      1. Configuration for Action and Share Extensions
      2. Action Extensions
      3. Share Extensions
      4. Document Provider Extension
      5. App Groups
    5. Summary
  13. 9. Security
    1. App Access
      1. Anonymous Access
      2. Authenticated Access
    2. Network Security
      1. Use HTTPS
      2. Use Certificate Pinning
    3. Local Storage
    4. Data Sharing
    5. Security and App Performance
    6. Checklist
    7. Summary
  14. IV. Beyond Code
  15. 10. Testing and Release
    1. Test Types
    2. Definitions
    3. Unit Testing
      1. Setup
      2. Writing Unit Tests
      3. Code Coverage
      4. Asynchronous Operations
      5. Xcode 6 Bonus: Performance Unit Tests
      6. Dependency Mocking
      7. Other Frameworks
    4. Functional Testing
      1. Setup
      2. Writing Functional Tests
      3. Project Structure
    5. Dependency Isolation
    6. Testing and Component Design
    7. Continuous Integration and Automation
    8. Best Practices
      1. Performance Testing
    9. Summary
  16. 11. Tools
    1. Accessibility Inspector
      1. Xcode Accessibility Inspector
      2. iOS Accessibility Inspector
    2. Instruments
      1. Using Instruments
      2. Activity Monitor
      3. Allocations
      4. Leaks
      5. Network
      6. Time Profiler
    3. Xcode View Debugger
    4. PonyDebugger
    5. Charles
    6. Summary
  17. 12. Instrumentation and Analytics
    1. Vocabulary
    2. Instrumentation
      1. Planning
      2. Implementation
      3. Deployment
    3. Analytics
    4. Real User Monitoring
      1. Analytics Versus Real User Monitoring
      2. Using RUM
    5. Summary
  18. V. iOS 9
  19. 13. iOS 9
    1. Application Lifecycle
      1. Universal Links
      2. Search
      3. Search Best Practices
    2. User Interface
      1. UIKit Framework
      2. Safari Services Framework
    3. Extensions
      1. Content Blocker Extension
      2. Spotlight Index Extension
    4. App Thinning
      1. Slicing
      2. On Demand Resources
      3. Bitcode
    5. Summary
  20. Index

Product information

  • Title: High Performance iOS Apps
  • Author(s): Gaurav Vaish
  • Release date: June 2016
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9781491911143